Dec 05 2007
Take the larger view of GIS
It’s interesting to see the passionate responses to Joe Francia’s article claiming that neogeography is != GIS. One one side there is a small group of folks bashing neogeography and claiming the superiority of “GIS”. On the other side there is the attitude claiming that some “revolution” has occurred which has supplanted traditional geographic techniques. You’d think there was a cold war going on! Both memes are as wrong as they are arrogant.
I have always defined GIS as
Geographic Information System: The integration of hardware, software, procedures and people to manage the collection, creation, analysis, synthesis, sharing and visualization of spatial information.
Neogeography easily fits that bill. So does Enterprise IT. So does Desktop mapping. So does Geostatistics. Geodesy. Web Mapping. Remote Sensing. LBS mobile technologies. Cartography. Surveying. Spatial Analysis and Modeling. Database management. Sensor webs. GPS… These disciplines are all a small piece of the larger puzzle that is GIS (whether their staunch adherents will admit to it or not!).
The key word in this controversial acronym is System. In order for any organization to implement a successful GIS, they must figure out a) which technologies will work for them and b) how to integrate them into a coherent whole. All of these aspects of GIS have something to offer so it’s important not to get stuck in a rut with blinders on. This goes for all “sides” of this ridiculous “neogeo vs GIS” argument.
NeoGeography is about empowering the public, the non-geographers and non GIS folks. The situation is actually more like a Venn diagram, with NeoGeo representable as an expanding ellipse of its own and what it encompasses, and traditional desktop GIS analysis and other “professional” geospatial business as another expanding ellipse of its own and what it encompasses, and some ever-increasing overlap in the middle. Will one ever supplant the other? Don’t know - but my guess is not, as there will always be professionals engaged with needs that one wouldn’t expect to be the same as for the public - but at any rate, does it matter?
True. neogeo is just another approach or subset of GIS using different tech, different techniques, different people in the system. Your last sentence hits the nail on the head… the needs of the project/organization/client will dictate what approaches to use.
I think both groups feel threatened to a certain degree. The GIS professionals feel like their “enterprise” stack is coming under fire by more agile methods, while neogeographers like me probably fear that a simple retooling of the entrenched GIS will respond to and dwarf their efforts.
In reality neogeo really doesn’t do analysis and heavy lifting, while “GIS” hasn’t been able to engage the wider developer community. They both need each other, even if they don’t know it yet.
Hi Matt, nice synthesis of the argument de jour. This type of controversy comes up whenever amateurs are able to approach the level of work previously only possible by professionals. Combined with the (perhaps) overstated importance GIS “experts” and the (perhaps) overstated empowering nature of web-mapping tools — and well you know what happens.
I think that there is another subtle piece to this controversy– GIS “experts” who feel threatened by open source tools which make it possible for amateurs to dabble in the art of Geographic Information Science. I am not suggesting that we can leave the work of professionals to amateurs- however, it is becoming clear that much of what GIS professionals can do is not all that complex.
Dylan
I think some paleo-GISers certainly feel threatened. But I don’t think open source software is what scares them - after all the development and use of most FOSS4G software still requires quite a learning curve. I think it’s the wiki-ness, the fact that now anyone (gasp!) can create a map using online tools.
Some people portray it as if neogeographers are taking a slice of the geospatial industry pie. What neogeography has really done is created a bigger pie. But just as the invention of calculators did not make mathematicians obsolete; neither will wiki-map tools replace the need for experts in other fields of spatial science.
Speaking as a paleo-GISer - I’ve been doing this for about 20 years - my take is the anything that puts the capabilities of geospatial and related technologies into the hands of the user is a good thing. I’ve been working toward that for a long time. GIS often becomes an end in and of itself, rather than what it really is - a means to any number of laudable ends. It is a tool - albeit a sophisticated one - that can be used to visualize and understand our world from literally an infinite number of perspectives. Open source, “wiki-ness,” neogeography (whatever that is), “traditional” GIS all serve to put the tools in the user’s - which is to say everybody’s - hands, where it they can and will be used - are being used - in creative and wonderful ways.
Anybody and their dog, and maybe their cat too, can now create a website or a blog or facebook page or some other means of publishing their thoughts and pictures and reach potentially millions of other minds. A decade ago we saw similar things going one with Desktop Publishing, and before that Word Processing, and email. In each “roll-over” event (neither of which have stopped by the way), we see experts — people who learned with “alpha” or “beta” tools, which took a fair amount of intellectual and time investment to master — threatened by a combination of a new breed of refined and easier to use tools and amateurs who sometimes have trouble distinguishing the handle from the business end.
Initially there is an explosion of new content, an explosion which seems to continue without end, like our ever-expanding universe. After the first blinding flash it becomes clear that all stars are not equal. Some hot spots have the feature of casting illumination, light that reveals, while others flare up and die to nothing in mere moments, leaving no lasting impression.
What I find interesting is that the “stars”, those whose reach is behind the norm, seem to arise equally from both the expert and amateur camps. There are those who only need a exposure to the right tools and don’t need any educational background or training. They “just get it”. And there are those who demonstrate their proficiency and deep knowledge only after long and hard training, coming up through the ranks. If we, society, deny either group expression as a whole we are impoverished.
Having a word processor doesn’t make one a great, or even a good, writer. Likewise if the only thing in one’s hands is parchment and charcoal a story to last a thousand years is still possible. The difference is entirely within the mind controlling the tools, and we have no means of measuring a mind’s quality of expression or insight until after the fact.